


Last Living Standing

by angel_gidget



Category: Lost in Space (Movie), Lost in Space (TV show)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Series, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-12
Updated: 2011-05-12
Packaged: 2017-10-19 07:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_gidget/pseuds/angel_gidget
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robot always said "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!" But perhaps, instead of shouting "danger," he should have been whispering "tragedy."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Living Standing

**Author's Note:**

> Done for [this request](http://community.livejournal.com/fic_on_demand/431018.html) @ [](http://fic-on-demand.livejournal.com/profile)[**fic_on_demand**](http://fic-on-demand.livejournal.com/). I have surprised myself at how depressing my writing can get. This is really angsty stuff. My first (and possibly last) Lost in Space fanfic. I'd always intended to do one, but never hit the right inspiration. I guess the request was just the prompt I needed.

_**Fic: Last Living Standing (Lost In Space)**_  
Title: **Last Living Standing**  
Author: [](http://angel-gidget.livejournal.com/profile)[**angel_gidget**](http://angel-gidget.livejournal.com/)  
Fandom: Lost in Space  
Chars/Pairings: Will Robinson, Dr. Smith, Robot, Don/Judy, Don/Penny.  
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: Robot always said "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!" But perhaps, instead of shouting "danger," he should have been whispering "tragedy."  
Notes: Done for [this request](http://community.livejournal.com/fic_on_demand/431018.html) @ [](http://fic-on-demand.livejournal.com/profile)[**fic_on_demand**](http://fic-on-demand.livejournal.com/). I have surprised myself at how depressing my writing can get. This is really angsty stuff. My first (and possibly last) Lost in Space fanfic. I'd always intended to do one, but never hit the right inspiration. I guess the request was just the prompt I needed.

  
Will Robinson clenches his fists as he watches his sister trade her care of animals in for care of their mother. Unlike Will, Penny isn't afraid of the lost look in the woman's eyes. At least, she doesn't show it. Her touch is gentle and her words are soft, as she guides them all away from the marker meant to commemorate their father's grave. A few yards away, Judy cries into Don's shoulder. Don allows her to weep as he guides her away from the throng, planning to comfort her in another way when gone from prying eyes. The look of wanting in Penny's eyes doesn't go missed by anyone save Don.

Will makes a personal note to check the ship's database on pregnancy and childbirth. He doesn't want to inquire as to whether or not his oldest sister and primary pilot have been taking certain precautions, yet it is always best to prepare. Preparation and planning for the future distract him from the present.

In the present, Smith stands apart from the family as usual, muttering mutiny to Robot as usual.

It's not mutiny when the captain's already dead.

Will tries not to think of it that way.

Smith is pleased and trying to hide it. If he didn't manage that courtesy, there would be absolutely nothing to stop Don from punching his nose through his face. Judy and Penny haven't the strength to stop him. Will doesn't have the conviction.

Smith has managed to lose more than a harsh critic. He's lost a rival. A yin to counter his yang so to speak. Will knows that without his father's wisdom to balance Smith's knowledge, he will be forced to trust his own discernment. It's hard to make just decisions when the devil on your left shoulder is celebrating the death of the angel on your right.

Dinner is Judy's gift to the rest of them. Over the course of it, she and Penny reminisce. Smith prattles, and everyone, at some point, asks someone else to pass a dish to them. Yet, no words pass between Will and Don. A very different discussion occurs between them. It starts when Will takes his father's place at the head of the table. It ends when dinner is over, and Don rises quirking an eyebrow in Will's direction, as if asking, like a subordinate soldier, to be dismissed. As a child, Will would have exalted in such power. The fact that he doesn't, the fact that it makes him feel a tremor of dread, is a portion of proof that he is truly ready for it.

They wait one day.

One day for his mother to stumble aimlessly. One day for his elder sister to patch everyone's wounds. One day for the younger to re-stock her menagerie's supplies. One day for his pilot to repair the ship. One day for his... teacher? Acquaintance? ... sounding-board to consider new directions of sedition. One day for his mechanical best friend to update his database. One day for Will Robinson to weep in his locked cabin.

They all feel some kind or relief when the Jupiter II takes flight again. Though of course, not all feel it is appropriate to show it.

Robot--good, loyal, immortal Robot--updates their scanners, allowing them to find a planet with potential fuel sources five days later.

Despite all the technology they have managed to keep with them, the mining is still hard work. No one is exempt from it save Mother and Smith. Smith--ostensibly--only to take care of her. The truth is that though Will doesn't feel entirely right leaving her in his care, actually getting Smith to perform manual labor is more work than any of them are prepared to do.

Hope dawns a month and a half later when tests indicate that Judy is with child. It is going to be a boy, and it's the next best thing to finding a path back to the Milky Way.

That hope dies half a year later when the baby is miscarried... taking Judy right along with him. They stay grounded for four weeks. They have to. For one thing, Don is is no shape to fly.

New planet, new monsters, new fuel sources. Same security check, same meal times, same ingrained protocols. Monotony becomes both the ally and the enemy as Will Robinson marks time.

Where once the autonomy of Robot's A.I. was mere theory and supposition, it soon becomes fervent belief as Will develops the pure need to believe in something good.

He watches in an almost detached manner as Don and Penny slowly gravitate towards one another. One morning, they both come down from Penny's room, hand in hand. Penny is... fluttery... but happy. Don is nervous, glancing in Will's direction. The man never did know how to ask for permission. Will simply shrugs and returns to breakfast, glancing away--as always--from the place next to him where Mother pecks unthinkingly at her food.

There is never any talk of children.

The next planet has no monsters. There are no strange, deadly plants, no prepositions towards natural disasters. It is barren, with nothing but stretches of rocky soil as far as the eye can see. There is something terrifying about that. There is nothing to struggle against, nothing to distract...

One day it seems to drive them all mad. It begins, as usual, when Smith opens his mouth. It escalates when Don punches him. Don then begins to beat him till his face is swollen, the way he's always wanted, but never dared to. Penny, who is not Judy, never tries to stop him. Law of the jungle. Will is nearly about to enter the fray himself when they all hear something they have not heard in years... they hear prayer.

It is a common dinner prayer, meant to give thanks to God for food and nothing more. It falls from Mother's lips much the way it fell from Father's the last time they all heard it.

It's the one role of leadership Will has never felt worthy enough to take.

For the first time in forever, Will looks at his mother like she's sane and like he isn't afraid of her. He sits next to her as he eats, and looks at her as she calmly looks back.

He curses, cries, and screams the following morning when Smith gives the prognosis that she died quietly in her sleep.

Punching his fist into the wall and injuring it, strangely, seems to calm him down. Three hours later, he realizes that he isn't angry anymore.

The makeshift funeral is a small marker over a grave and he and Penny exchanging thoughts over it. Will and his sister are more bonded in that wide stretch of rocky nothing than they have been for the last several years within the close quarters of the ship.

Will finds that he cares. Penny and Don are family, blood, and life. Smith and Robot are knowing, companionship, and perspective.

There is peace, routine, and passage of time as they traverse the stars.

It is an earthquake that takes his final relatives from him. When Will discovers their bodies among the rocks, he sees that they were together when they died, holding one another. Will isn't sure about Don, but he knows that it's as good as any way to go as far as Penny would have been concerned. The cliffs suffice as their grave, and Will adds their resting place to the map of grave-maker planets under the navigation files.

Forty-eight hours later, the solid ache of loneliness hits him so strongly that he thinks he might die. He panics till Smith sedates him. He awakes to the irony that Robot is reading him a bed-time story.

He rises and strolls to the pilot's chair, gazing out into the black void of planets, suns, and nebulae. Every since he left childhood behind, Will has always known that it would come down to the three of them. Smith, Robot, and himself. Some part of him still thinks Smith will outlive them all.

Most of the pieces have been removed from the proverbial chess board. The preliminaries are over. Now it is time for the hardest part: admitting that everything they have done up to this point has been wrong.

Wandering randomly through the cosmos isn't and never has been the way back home. The answer is far more scientific. All Will has required is the time and lack of distraction to build the machine. Time and space distortion has always been the key. Robot creates the list of human life-supporting planets. Smith does the honors of picking one at random. They settle there, and turn the Jupiter II to scrap. It becomes fodder for the machine.

It is years later that the work is complete. Will knows, somehow--despite having no frame of reference--that he is old. Smith doesn't count. Smith is too much changed by the experiments he as breathed into his own body, altering him and dementing him. Robot is ever constant and immortal.

So much of the machine is theory. The portal is there; he has Earth in sight. For the first time in decades, Will feels anticipation instead of drudgery and determination. But the anticipation is for anything. There is no guarantee that he will arrive through the portal on earth in the space between 1997 and 2001. There is no guarantee that he will ever emerge from the portal at all. Life and death stare back at him from the portal in equal balance. Will feels ready to welcome either one. He merely turns back for a final look.

Smith is too much changed and far to aged. He has no place in any sort of society now, if he ever did. He never understood people anyway. Smith will die here, ever master of what little he surveys.

Robot... Robot will continue. On and on, till some other hapless adventurer finds him, human or otherwise, and listens to the tales he has to tell.

Will has always preferred the future to the present, and if his future lies in the past, then so be it. If not... these are the last things he will ever see.

With the loud whoop of a child, Will Robinson throws himself down into danger. The portal beckons as he plummets.

Ever-cryptic danger takes the form of a golden circle of light.

 _e.n.d._   



End file.
